Vr Immersion and the Next Step

        Since the beginnings of time, society has been endlessly seeking different approaches and types entertainment. From Shakespearean plays, television sets, the first 8-Bit game and now high resolution monitors, media technology has been constantly seeking and advancing one important element, immersion. Since the early 1900s with the development of radio technology, millions of people can hear the big baseball game or the next important presidential address. The development of radio technology was one of the first steps and peeks at the future of immersion and virtual reality technology. After Reginald Fessenden, using a rotary-spark transmitter to enhance clarity and reduce static, broadcast the first radio program on Christmas Eve 1906, radio has been a key part of life and entertainment for many generations. After a long day at work, you would be able to sit down and visit all your favorite characters in all your favorite radio programs. Their familiar voices would talk to you, like they did every single day, and you could truly feel as if you could escape and belong to their world.  

        As the popular 1979 song by The Buggles states, video has indeed killed the radio star. Television and other forms of video entertainment has been wildly successful since the late 1940s and even more so after the development of colored screens and broadcasting to replace the static prone black and white screens. No longer would you have to use your imagination to supply images to the audio, television could let you be in the ring to watch Muhammed Ali winning yet another heavyweight championship belt without leaving the comfort of your home. I Love Lucy was known and loved by all American families because they could join and relate with her antics and adventures every single week. Immersion, as was hoped, was taken to another level with video technology. The rapid development of video technology also shows the desire for the next level of immersion. VHS tapes in 1976, DVDs in 1997 and more recently Blu-Ray discs in 2006. The change from analog signals to digital for a more clearer and consistent picture and most recently, the obsession with higher definition and ultra HD displays has led to an arms race from 480i standard definition all the way to the new Samsung 70in 4K curve monstrosities that easily cost over ten-thousand dollars. The development Smart TVs, Internet TVs, and of course the multitude of entertainment providers such as Netflix, Hulu, and Roku in under 40 years indicates a need, a thirst for even more entertainment, better immersion technology.

Audio and video are necessities for immersion, but for true immersion, a critical part of the equation is missing. Interaction with the media. Video gaming technology has been developed at an explosive rate since the release of Pong, widely recognized as the first game to have commercial success with the general populace. Since the 8 bit era, the continual release of more and more complicated games and gaming systems such as Ghosts and Goblins and the revolutionary Nintendo GameCube has changed gaming from bouncing a ball from two paddles to skill intensive fighting games and the ever time consuming and addicting MMORPGS or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Entire worlds have been build out of the need for more entertainment, more interaction and more immersion. Take the popular game World of Warcraft for example, out of the 100 million player base, the average player spends 22 hours in game trying to collect over eighty-six thousand items all the while earning the game developer Blizzard over a billion dollars.

Towards the goal of true immersion however, there have been many stumbles and failures. In 1989, Mattel made the Power Glove commercially available for the Nintendo Entertainment System. What appears to be a futuristic glove outfitted with a controller on the wrist, the Power Glove was clumsy and inaccurate to use with its poor selection of two games and seemed to be only a bait for those who wished for a more immersive experience. However due to the gimmicky nature of the product, its excellent use of popular culture in marketing and the time period of the release, over one-hundred thousand units of the Power Glove, priced at seventy-five dollars were sold, making it a commercial, but not a technological success. Next comes the anaglyph red and blue 3D glasses, while somewhat effective in producing a 3D image, caused the user disorientation and headaches. The glasses also failed to produce an accurate color scheme of the media presented, often distorting the colors into darker tones. This led to the 3D TV craze in 2012 where sale of 3D TVs jumped from a little over two million in 2010 to over forty million in 2012. However, the rate of sales is rapidly declining due to some design and industry factors. People did not want to wear glasses just to watch television, they were uncomfortable and ugly, 3D programming during this time was also scarce, after watching 3D animals or fish for two hours, the user would simply get bored. With the launch of Virtual Reality goggles, hopefully they can amend the mistakes of clumsy controls, uncomfortable hardware and lack of interesting software and media.

In the past decade, media and entertainment technology has made great steps forwards in the aspects of true immersion, social integration and mobile technology. Advancements in social media platform accessibility on all devices and the social norm being connected via smart phone twenty four hours a day, 7 days a week. Entertainment and games however, is still the most developed field in the VR industry. VR today has come a long way from stereoscopes with black and white photographs and huge ceiling mounted head with wire-frame graphics.  With the first commercial release of many fully-powered VR devices in the first two quarters of 2016, the technology reviewers and critics are saying is “An experience that’s out of this world.”  Many are proclaiming 2016 as the “The Year of VR”. This technology has many great applications in the medical, sports, science, education and several other fields.

        Virtual Reality by definition is a “computer technology that replicates an environment, real or imagined, and simulates a user's physical presence that environment in a way that allows the user to interact with it”. The present day implementation of this concept is done by headsets mounted with an OLED display with a field of view of 110 degrees, a tracking system to account for head movement, usually in the form of a from facing camera or laser emitting base stations, specially made controllers and lastly, a build in CPU and GPU or both in the form of a linked computer. The leaders of the industry consists of Occulus VR, who was bought out in 2014 by Facebook for the high sum of $2 Billion. Microsoft’s HoloLens, Smartglasses that aims to continue what Google glass failed to achieve. HTC and Valve, one of the biggest technology innovators and gaming companies co-developing the HTC Vive. And finally, Sony’s Project Morpheus, a new addition to the PlayStation franchise, Even Google is getting on board with Google Cardboard, a $15 paper contraption along with other cheap and accessible devices powered by what everyone already has, their smartphone. These companies and the consumer base they possess conveys that the future of VR is huge and limitless, from ranges of $15 for the curious to upwards of $5000 for the tech junkies, VR as an industry will surely explode. With many positive applications, VR is not just for gamers. Doctors can carefully practice new and potentially dangerous types of surgery hundreds of times with specially designed gear. Soldiers can simulate specific combat situations or take drone or air simulators to the next level. Teachers and Professors can use a multitude of educational software and teach constellations and planets while gazing up at the sky in perfect clarity, talk about ancient cultures while walking past the Great Pyramids or the Silk Road, learn how to design a bridge to withstand hurricane level winds, create and mold different types of wood and metal or even recreate physics experiments impossible to accomplish in reality.  The possibilities are truly limitless for peers of all ages in all types of fields.

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